his lessons and his
advice to receive and preserve the patrimony that his ancestors have
conquered.

Prince William was born January 27, 1859. On the 29th of February,
1881, he married Princess Augusta Victoria, daughter of the Duke of
Sleswick-Holstein. Their eldest son, little Prince William,
represented with his father in our engraving, was born at Potsdam, May
6, 1882.--_L'Illustration._

* * * * *

GENERAL F. PERRIER.

Francois Perrier, who was born at Valleraugue (Gard), on the 18th of
April, 1835, descended from an honorable family of Protestants, of
Cevennes. After finishing his studies at the Lyceum of Nimes and at
St. Barbe College, he was received at the Polytechnic School in 1853,
and left it in 1857, as a staff officer.

Endowed with perseverance and will, he owed all his grades and all his
success to his splendid conduct and his important labors. Lieutenant
in 1857, captain in 1860, major of cavalry in 1874, lieutenant-colonel
in 1879, he received a year before his death the stars of
brigadier-general. He was commander of the Legion of Honor and
president of the council-general of his department.

General Perrier long ago made a name for himself in science. After
some remarkable publications upon the trigonometrical junction of
France and England (1861) and upon the triangulation and leveling of
Corsica (1865), he was put at the head of the geodesic service of the
army in 1879. In 1880, the learned geodesian was sent as a delegate to
the conference of Berlin for settling the boundaries of the new
Greco-Turkish frontiers. In January of the same year, he was elected a
member of the Academy of Sciences, as successor to M. De Tessan. He
was a member of the bureau of longitudes from 1875.

In 1882, Perrier was sent to Florida to observe the transit of Venus.
Thanks to his activity and ability, his observations were a complete
success. Thenceforward, his celebrity continued to increase until his
last triangulating operations in Algeria.

[Illustration: GENERAL FRANCOIS PERRIER.]

"Do you not remember," said Mr. Janssen recently to the Academy of
Sciences, "the feeling of satisfaction that the whole country felt
when it learned the entire success of that grand geodesic operation
that united Spain with our Algeria over the Mediterranean, and passed
through France a meridian arc extending from the north of England as
far as to the Sahara, that is to say, an arc exc